


Five SHIELD Agents Who Don't Look For New Jobs

by psocoptera



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dementia, Gen, Jobhunting, Original Character(s), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 21:12:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1443079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not everyone needs or wants new employment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five SHIELD Agents Who Don't Look For New Jobs

**Author's Note:**

> My original title was "Five SHIELD Agents Who Don't Look For New Jobs After The Triskelion Falls" but I thought that was too spoilery for _Winter Soldier_ to use as the title.
> 
> This is the same Maria Hill as in my story [Five Secrets Maria Hill Would Like To Pretend She's Keeping From The Rest of SHIELD](http://archiveofourown.org/works/459089), but you don't need to have read that.

**1\. Peggy Carter's Home Health Aide/Monitor/Bodyguard**

It's easy enough, when Carmela realizes her SHIELD paycheck won't be showing up, to arrange for her pay to come out of Former Director Carter's private accounts instead. Legally speaking, she's embezzling - Carmela is responsible for keeping an eye on Carter's finances, but the actual Power of Attorney went through the SHIELD Veterans' Administration International division, and who even knows what that means now. She got Peggy's verbal okay, though, not that Peggy would remember it later. But Carmela had waited until she had a nice lucid hour and filled her in on all the news, and written down everything Peggy had said in reaction, like, "I wonder if MacDonnell... I never trusted him", that sort of thing. (Maybe someone would find that useful, if she ever had someone to report to again.)

Peggy had been very worried that Carmela would leave and she would have to find someone else, and how would she ever manage, and what if they didn't get along. Carmela had assured her that she wasn't going anywhere. She _likes_ Peggy - Peggy tells great stories, and Carmela hardly ever has to interrupt her to make sure she's not spilling decades-old secrets to the meds nurse, or whatever, and even when the dementia is riding her hard, she's still tractable, she's not the type to kick you in the face while you're trimming her toenails, or try to garrote you with the string of her Lifeline pendant. And realistically, it's not like Carmela has such great career prospects if she did want to move on - there aren't a lot of other positions that call for a Level Eight SHIELD clearance and a willingness to change someone's Depends.

Plus she's only had to stop, like, three assassination attempts since taking the job. She hates shooting people (and breaking necks is even worse), she's always seen herself as more of a caring, nurturing type than a killer. So, no, Carmela is staying put.

**2\. The Guy Who Was Supposed To Have Planted A Subcutaneous Tracker On Captain America Way Back When They First Thawed Him Out**

He swears that he _did_ inject it, that Rogers' body must have just rejected it somehow, one more trick of the serum. Rumlow has him killed anyways - incompetence, laziness, deliberate sabotage, he doesn't even care, he has this damn manhunt to deal with now, thanks, asshole.

**3\. Deputy Director Maria Hill**

In one of the typical ironies of her life, Maria would actually rather be seriously applying for the job for which she's nominally interviewing, Director of Stark Industries' Aerospace Operations, reporting directly to Virginia Potts, than the job she is actually here to _do_ , namely, pursuing and destroying other copies of Zola, working directly with Stark. (Maria will never like Stark, but she's grudgingly agreed with Fury that he's not Hydra, and he certainly seems to be genuinely enraged by the news that Hydra was behind his parents' accident. And he did build the world's only other sentient A.I. - only other _known_ sentient A.I., ugh - so, as little as she likes it, he's their best bet.) It's days like this that Fury's reliance on her sits most heavily on her shoulders, though. In another life, she could really be looking forward to playing with launch schedules and having lunch meetings with Pepper and taking her executive perks in the form of test flights... but no. There's evil to stymie, the free world to defend, etc. Sigh. 

**4\. Clint Barton, Sometimes Known As Hawkeye**

He had put arrows through three eyes with Sitwell in his ear.

He'd killed a lot more people than that when he was under Loki's control, and of course he'd killed innumerable others in action - people with guns in their hands, often firing at him, or Natasha, or civilians.

But he'd done three outright assassinations with Sitwell.

One of them had been a doctor. Sitwell had said - Sitwell had had the intel, in a big manila-folder file - that he was doing experiments on kids, nasty infectious-disease biowarfare stuff. That they had to drop him cold, in case he had samples on him, dead-man vials of something airborne. So Clint had put an arrow in his eye, as he came out of one of his several clinics.

But now - he just didn't know. Maybe Hydra had wanted his dirty science for themselves. Maybe he hadn't been making war germs at all, maybe he'd been on the verge of curing malaria or something, and Hydra hadn't wanted that to happen.

Clint is never, never firing under someone else's orders ever again. He's not laying down the bow for good (well, he'd kind of broken it, when he first heard the news, but he's got others) - he'll still protect himself, or Natasha, or civilians.

But he's done being used.

**5\. Phil Coulson, Agent of SHIELD**

The eleven-word message is unsigned, and Skye can't trace it. That's okay. Coulson knows who sent it, and it's enough to give proof through the night, so to speak.

_I resurrected you. You resurrect SHIELD. Get it right this time._


End file.
